Another Dimension
by Ironsnake345
Summary: While en route to battle Andross, Fox investigates the mysterious disappearance of a scout from the Cornerian army who vanished without a trace. However, while searching, Fox ends up vanishing by the same means as the man he's trying to find... And it's up to the two of them to find a way back to their own reality. Based on the "Out of This Dimension!" easter egg in the first game.
1. Intro

"Okay, there's nothing here of use, I'm heading deeper into the belt.

...Oh wow, there are some big asteroids in this region. Borderline planetoids, I'd say.

Wait a minute... The scanner is picking up some interesting readings from one of them, there appears to be some high-energy organic material inside; could be a source of high-grade biofuel. I'll see if I can crack this rock open, see what's the source of these readings. Firing weapons.

Okay, asteroid has been mostly destroyed after several shots aaannnnnd... Wwwwhaat is that? Something flew out of the asteroid when it exploded, it... it appears to be some kind of giant bird? It's... its body is about the size of my arwing, but its wings are just... huge. What's more, it's alive and navigating, even in the vacuum of space. It looks like this is what the scanner was picking up. I'm gonna get a closer look.

On closer inspection, it really does look like some kind of bird, feathers an-"

Suddenly, the voice recording faded to static. Seconds later, the pilot's voice started cutting in and out, seemingly at random.

"It# ho##ing o#to the ####### scan##'s go#g craz# ######## re####y ## ##ing warped###############"

The static returned, but the pilot's voice never returned to interrupt it.

 _click_

The hologram of General Pepper leaned forward to press a button, and the recording stopped playing. The image turned to face Fox and his team of friends and said, "That black-box transmission was the last we ever heard of Dessler Coba."


	2. Chapter 1: Briefing

Fox was speechless. He'd listened to many such transmissions before, many of them gruesome, but none quite like what he'd just heard. He didn't know what to make of it.

"So, to recap," he said, voice slightly unsteady, "Dessler Coba was scouting for materials in the nearby asteroid belt when this happened?"

General Pepper's holographic presence looked as stoic as ever. "That's right."

"And after that transmission, he just vanished without a trace?"

"Correct."

"And there was no debris found which could have been the wreckage of an M-scouter not already accounted for by front-line casualties, or any evidence at all aside from a few blasted asteroids?"

"None whatsoever."

Fox mulled over the details in his head. This was troubling; if Andross was behind this, it meant that he had created a weapon capable of simply removing ships from the battlefield, and perhaps from the Lylat system entirely. Could any shield protect against such a weapon? What were its limits; was it only effective against small ships like arwings or were the massive Cornerian battleships at risk too?

Fox shook off these thoughts. It wouldn't be anything to worry about; not if he had anything to say about it. "Alright, General, what's our mission on our trip through the belt?"

"Your mission is to try and locate the whereabouts of Dessler Coba as you pass through the asteroid belt. If you discover any sign of a weapon which would be responsible for his disappearance, gather any intel you can and destroy the weapon. Remember, though; getting through the belt and attacking Venom is still priority one. If you cannot discover what caused the disappearance of Dessler, abort and continue moving towards Venom."

"Understood. We'll-"

"Hang on a minute!" Falco chimed in, interrupting his leader. "General, remind me again why we're going off chasing ghosts? Even if there is some Venomian warp-weapon behind this, it's just gonna go out of commission once we take care of Andross! All his army's orders come from _Him!_ "

General Pepper maintained a completely stoic face in spite of this outburst. "I'm afraid you're wrong, Falco. We've known since the beginning of the war that Andross' soldiers are remarkably loyal to him; even if their leader is killed, they will continue fighting, albeit much less dangerous with no general. However, a weapon as dangerous as this would still pose a significant threat to the Cornerian army even without a general to guide it, which is why we need confirmation of whether or not it exists. Any more questions, Star Fox?"

Fox looked back and forth at the members of his team. Falco seemed satisfied by this rebuttal, and Slippy and Peppy didn't seem to have anything to say. "No more questions, General. We'll do our best to find out what happened to Dessler Coba!"

"Excellent. Good luck, Star Fox!" The hologram saluted at the team of four, and then faded out of existence.

The rest of the mission prep went by in a blur of familiarity. The team had done this a hundred times, and would do it again hundreds more. Ships were refueled and energized, weapons charged, systems pre-tested, pocket blasters prepped (just in case) as the Great Fox flew closer to the asteroid belt. The team stood ready until ROB64's robotic voice came on over the ship's P.A, " **Enemy ships moving in to attack.** "

Four arwings launched from the Great Fox's hanger, ready to clear the way for the team to continue on the path to Venom. The pilots within both hoped to uncover the mystery of Dessler Coba, and to avoid meeting the same fate as him.


	3. Chapter 2: The Mission

So far, the mission was going as usual. Swarms of Venomian fighters leapt out at team Star Fox from behind the myriad asteroids, only to be quickly reduced to wreckage. It was nothing the team hadn't seen before, and nothing they couldn't handle. Still, though, they had another objective besides shooting down enemy ships so that the Great Fox could pass safely through the belt, and when he wasn't busy charging recklessly into the enemy ranks, Slippy was constantly running scans on the larger asteroids the team approached.

Fox banked hard, his arwing lurched out of the way of enemy fire, and just as quick he retaliated with three shots of his own. After so many battles, it was like a dance, and sometimes Fox could even let his mind wander as he fought. What could Dessler have meant by "warped?" And beyond that, what even was that bird? It couldn't have been an enemy craft; it scanned as biological, and according to Dessler, it even had feathers. Was it even possible for Andross to be behind this? Or was this all just a fool's errand, chasing ghosts as Falco said?

Enemy fire collided with the arwing, shaking Fox out of his reverie. Right, fool's errand or not, there was a mission to get back to. Fox pressed a button on his console, and comms went live to the rest of the team. "Slippy, keep running scans on the asteroids. We'll take care of the bogeys."

The comm screen flashed with static and Falco's image came on. "I've got a bad feeling about this, Fox. I'm telling you, this mission isn't worth it; we just need to take out Andross, and then it's only a matter of taking out the trash!"

Fox quickly opened comms again, and said, "You heard General Pepper, Falco. Even without Andross, if there's some kind of warp weapon around here it's gonna be dangerous, perhaps for the entire Cornerian army."

"And what if there is some kind of weapon out there? Some kind of weapon that can eliminate any one ship from the battlefield- or even the entire star system- with a single shot? What if we find it and end up ten light-years out of the Lylat system?"

Fox paused for a moment. He was worried about this too, but this kind of self-endangerment was all part of the job. Right as Fox was reaching for the button to open comms, Slippy's face came up on the screen. "Uh, hey guys? You're gonna wanna see this."

Data from Slippy's latest scan of the asteroids came on screen. Fox read over the information carefully; the center of the asteroid contained a dense mass which the scanner read as biological, and it was radiating a lot of energy of an unknown type. There were no holes or fissures in the rock which would allow it to be pushed in manually; According to Slippy, either the asteroid formed around it or it was injected in by some device capable of sealing the rock behind it. "I think this is what Dessler found, you guys," said Slippy.

Fox opened comms and replied, "Looks like this is it. We'll have to get at that biological material in the center to figure out what's going on here, but if there aren't any fissures..." Fox's voice trailed off, only to be quickly interrupted by Slippy's shout of, "Then we're just gonna have to make one!"

Slippy closed in and opened fire on the asteroid. Oh Slippy, thought Fox, just as reckless as ever. But at least he had a point; as of now, the team was on the clock, so they might as well rush the search with what they've got so far. Fox opened fire on the asteroid as well, followed soon after by the rest of the team. After only a few seconds of sustained laser fire, the asteroid cracked, then split, then crumbled, and a white orb, speckled with orange spots, shot off into space. Fox barely caught a glimpse of it, but it looked like... an egg? Slippy's image flashed onto the comm screen. "Did you guys see that? That thing that flew out of the asteroid was the source of the weird readings!"

The orb sailed off until it became a speck in the distance. It was traveling faster than the arwings were capable of in cramped space like the asteroid field. Comms went live yet again and Fox said, "If that's the source of the readings, I think we've lost our mark."

Falco took this opportunity to launch back into his rant. "I told you this was a fool's errand! Now our only lead is too far off even for line of sight, and our mark's lost. We-"

Peppy opened up comms, the static as his signal went live interrupting Falco. "I wouldn't say that just yet. Look, over where it was headed!"

The team turned their attention in the direction that the mysterious orb sailed off in. An enormous white bird was approaching their crafts. Its body was as big as one of their arwings, and its wings were downright huge. It looked just like the bird that Dessler Coba had described in the transmission. Fox was the first to speak up over comms. "Well, it looks like I was wrong. We need to capture this thing somehow, run some tests on it and see if it has anything to do with Dessler's disappearance."

Falco cut in after this. "If that transmission is anything to go by, this bird is dangerous! I say we capture it once it's a cadaver!"

With that, Falco opened fire on the bird. Fox was exasperated at first, but he took a moment to consider what falco said. The last thing that happened on that transmission before the static began was Dessler flying in closer to that bird, and Fox could've sworn he heard Dessler say something about it holding onto his craft. It was entirely possible that this bird was the danger here, and even if it wasn't, chances were it would maintain enough of its strange energy as a corpse that its role in the disappearance could probably be discovered in a lab. Satisfied, Fox approached the bird and prepared to open fire, but Falco cut in again as he moved. "Don't bother, Fox. You're always the one who rushes in to take on the big, dangerous enemies solo. I'm not going to let you steal the glory here too!"

Annoyed, Fox looked down directly at Falco's face on the comm screen as he replied. "Oh come on, Falco, is now really the best time to-"

"Fox, watch out!" Slippy's warning interrupted Fox as he spoke, and he looked up, to see what the warning was about.

The first thing Fox saw was that the mysterious bird was flying straight into his arwing. The second thing he saw was that everything outside of his cockpit-the bird, the asteroids, even the wings of his own craft-was trailing off vivid, solid afterimages. The third thing he saw was that all the afterimages filling his field of view were beginning to twist and distort, as though reality itself was being warped out of shape around him. Then, his vision went white. Fox heard General Pepper's voice coming in over comms, "Come in, Arwings! Fox, where are you? We need you to protect Corneria!"

The next thing Fox new, he was somewhere else entirely.


	4. Chapter 3: Out of This Dimension!

As Fox's vision cleared, he was overcome with a splitting headache. One hand instinctively grasping the flight joystick, his other clasped around his forehead as he averted his gaze from the space surrounding his ship. "Ohhh, my head..." he groaned.

Fox stayed like this for almost a full minute. Nothing came to interrupt him, so there he sat, trying to shake off the horrible ache. When he was finally starting to feel better, he glanced out the windows to have a look at his surroundings, but he couldn't make heads or tails of what he was seeing. Everything outside of the ship was a blur, not helped by the last residual shreds of his headache that clung to the inside of his skull. He decided to close his eyes for a moment longer, give the headache time to subside completely. When he finally felt he had recovered, he looked out the windows again. To his dismay, things hadn't gotten much clearer.

Outside the ship, Fox couldn't see much besides a warped, lurching image of unknown space, with only a few constant specks off in the distance that he could focus on. Stars, planets, and other celestial bodies of odd colors twisted and deformed throughout his field of view. He couldn't believe his eyes; was he dreaming? Fox pinched himself on the shoulder - no, this wasn't a dream. Fox looked down at his monitor and switched on the radar. The screen showed his ship at one end of a giant pill shape of open space with few other objects within, and nothing but static beyond it.

In the midst of considering what this meant, Fox noticed some of the few specks that weren't constantly twisting and distorting like everything else he saw were getting closer. He set the scanner on them, but didn't get much; just a couple of masses of some unknown material. As they got closer, they began to take shape. However, this didn't help much for identifying them; now they just looked like a couple of squares approaching from a high angle. As he got a better look at them, he noticed they actually looked pretty thin, paper-thin in fact. Fox watched as two gray sheets floated closer to his fighter, moving like wind-blown paper, and then to his surprise began to fold themselves up into the shape of paper airplanes. Paper airplanes which dove straight for his arwing.

This caught Fox off his guard. The pair of airplanes crashed into his ship, the impact knocking it away slightly. Whatever these things were, they were heavy; they taxed the arwing's shields to a degree comparable to laser fire. As soon as Fox had the arwing back under control, he pulled up into a loop maneuver, placing the paper planes directly in his crosshairs. He fired, and with one shot each the planes shattered to fragments. The threat eliminated, Fox steadied his arwing and took a moment to collect his thoughts. By now he was utterly confused; between the flash of light, the lurching scenery and whatever it was that had just attacked him, he just felt completely lost. This was like something out of a fever dream, but it was all right there, perfectly real. Real enough to damage his fighter, anyhow.

As that last thought passed through his head, Fox noticed that more of the strange squares were getting closer. Alright, thought Fox, I'll just have to fight off these things and see if there's an end to this place. As two more of the sheets folded themselves into airplanes, Fox readied his weapons; with any luck, he'd find a way out of here eventually.


	5. Chapter 4: Meeting the Missing Man

Fox rolled and weaved through the obstacle course that was forming before him; the paper planes had begun attacking nearly a dozen at a time. It didn't help either that a bunch of space junk was coming seemingly out of nowhere for him to dodge as he continued onward. Repeated scans of the area gave him no hints as to what was going on; the junk was made of the same unidentified material and had no clear origins. Worse, the pill shape in which his radar was working had gotten tighter, giving him less room to dodge the objects flying towards him. Whatever it was, it was completely invisible, but Fox's ship bounced right off of this strange barrier.

Three more of the planes crashed into the arwing, shaking it off course. The second he recovered, Fox opened fire, blasting five of the objects to shrapnel only to find ten more approaching from the front. Fox was pressured, but he wasn't overwhelmed... yet. Fox barely had any time to glance down at his radar screen to see how far he'd gotten in the tube, but no matter how many times he peeked after buying himself some time, he never seemed to get any closer to the end of the strange space-tunnel.

Finally, the debris seeking his ship began thinning out. Now that he had a moment to breathe, Fox checked his radar. He was right at the center of the pill-shaped barrier, and the debris that had missed him was passing right through it, merging with the static beyond. Eventually, the debris, the paper airplanes and everything just stopped coming altogether. As the last pieces slipped into the static area, the barrier on Fox's radar began to expand.

Fox now had plenty of open space to fly in, and only two blips showed up on his radar. One was just a giant chunk of various materials; a planetoid, plain and simple. The other was more... erratic. It stuck to a small area within the visible space, but it jittered around randomly, unlike anything Fox had ever seen. Suddenly, a chime sounded on Fox's comms, indicating that a distress signal had been recieved. It was a standard-issue distress signal common to the vast majority of ships in the lylat system, and it was coming from the planetoid.

Immediately, Fox opened a comm channel with whoever was sending the distress signal.

"This is Fox of team Star Fox, I've recieved a distress signal coming from your location. What's going on?"

The face of a golden retriever came on Fox's comm screen, bearing an expression of incredible relief, and extreme disbelief as a familiar voice followed soon after.

"Oh thank god, help's finally here! Please, please tell me you have a way out of this place!"

Fox was taken aback by the sudden outburst. "He-hey, calm down, what's going on? Are you alright?"

The dog stopped a moment to breathe, but couldn't manage to calm himself down fully. "I-I've been trapped here for days, I came so close to dying... I still can't believe I found someplace safe in here. Just... Please tell me you have a better idea what's going on in this crazy place than i do!"

Fox shook his head. "I'm... sorry, but I'm just as confused as you are. I just got attacked by an armada of paper airplanes. _Deadly_ paper airplanes, no less. I'm not sure how I got here, and i have no idea how to get out. By the sound of it, I'm as stuck as you are."

There was a pause. The golden retriever didn't appear on comms for a good fifteen seconds. Eventually, Fox decided to ping him again. "Hello?" He said into comms.

Within seconds, the reply came. "Y-yeah, sorry. Here, why don't we discuss this in person? Come land your ship on the planetoid; it's got a stronger gravitational field than you'd think, and it even has breathable atmosphere."

Fox decided that was a good idea. It would be easier to figure this out face to face. He brought his arwing in close to the planetoid, and sure enough, the G-diffusers detected an abnormally strong gravity field surrounding it; 0.96 G's. As the arwing auto-adjusted itself according to the gravity, Fox noticed another arwing on the planetoid's surface; an M-scouter, by the looks of it. Fox sent out a scanning pulse as he descended. There was indeed a gaseous atmosphere surrounding the planetoid, matching that of planet Corneria. Finally, the arwing touched down, and Fox opened the cockpit.

A rush of fresh air greeted Fox as he stepped out onto the rocky surface, the shifting starscape still nausiatingly lurching around him. Next to the M-scouter stood the golden retriever he saw on comms, wearing a standard Cornerian army uniform, which was getting fairly dirty. The dog approached Fox and said, "Well, hello. What did you say your name was; Fox? I'm Dessler. Dessler Coba."

Fox's voice carried more than a bit of surprise as the reply came. "Dessler Coba? Huh. Well, at least that's one good thing that's happened since I wound up here. I found who I was looking for."


	6. Chapter 5: Meanwhile

The Great Fox sat at the far edge of the asteroid belt. Though team Star Fox had managed to push through the enemy forces, it was not without cost. Despite the fact that they were now safely away from Andross' forces, a dark cloud hung over the two team members aboard the Great Fox. Slippy and Peppy sat in silence, waiting intently for word from Falco.

A minute passed. Peppy hailed Falco's arwing on a long-distance channel.

"This is Peppy hare, come in Falco, what's your status?"

"Falco here. Still chasing it. We're way out in open space by now; there's nothing anywhere near where we are. It's like this thing's just flying around randomly."

Once again, the ship was silent. Falco had been chasing the bird since it got Fox, hoping to find some shred of evidence as to what it had done to him. So far, nothing; any venomian ships he passed ignored the bird and attacked him, whilst the creature simply flew off aimlessly into space, propelled by some unknown force.

Peppy and Slippy went back to silence, waiting for the next minute mark. That was when they'd hail Falco again. It was a system they'd come up with on the spot, aiming to gather all the data they could in case, god forbid, Falco didn't make it either. Finally, Slippy broke the silence, speaking frantically.

"I don't think this is going anywhere, Peppy! What are we gonna do?"

"We need to stay calm, Slippy. That's all there is to it, we just need to stay calm."

"H-h-how can you say that!? Fox was our best pilot, an-and now he's gone and-"

"Slippy! Just... calm down! If there's anything we can do about it, we'll never be able to do it if we panic! Fox is still out there somewhere; if he's anything like his father, then there's nothing in the universe that can stop him, and one way or another, he's going to make it. And what we're going to do is find out what exactly happened to him, where he went, and we are going to get him back to us, you hear me?"

Slippy opened his mouth to reply, but he was cut off by Falco's voice cutting in over comms.

"This is Falco, I... I lost the bird."

"WHAT!?" Peppy shouted, and rushed to activate the microphone to reply to his teammate's message. "Falco, what happened? How did you lose the bird?"  
"I don't know, it just vanished! One moment it's there, then there's a flash of light and it's just gone! I don't know where it went, or how, it just... It's gone."

Silence hung over the ship once again. Finally, Peppy once again pressed the talk button.

"Falco... We're gonna have to just continue with the mission. Where are you, right now?"

"No! I am going to track down that damned bird and I'll cut its big pale chest open if that's what it takes to find Fox! I am not going to just-"

"Falco, listen to me! Believe me, I know how hard it is to lose a team member and a friend, but we have to keep going. Andross is still laying waste to the star system, and the army is counting on us to break through the strongholds he's set up between here and Venom. If Andross was involved, we're going to figure out what he did and use that to get Fox back. Even if that doesn't work, we'll figure something out; he's still out there somewhere, I can feel it! But for now, we just need to keep pushing forward."

Once again, silence. Nobody dared speak a word. For a full minute, not a word came over Comms, and neither Slippy nor Peppy said a thing. Finally, Falco hailed the Great Fox, one last time.  
"I'm about a quarter of the way to Fichina, I'll send you the coordinates. Pick me up before you head to your next stop on this adventure. And by the way... I'm holding you to that promise, old man."

True to his word, Falco sent the coordinates of his position to the Great Fox's computer. On command, ROB plotted a course and powered up the gravity drive. As the ship sailed through space towards Falco, the interior remained uneasily silent. The ship that usually held a somewhat relaxed atmosphere, saturated with the confidence of team Star Fox, now harbored only worry and unease; not only for Fox, but for the mission as a whole.


End file.
